Stanford, you want to ban 'harmful' words? Two can play at this game. Here's MAUREEN CALLAHAN's list

Only that most cowardly phrase — 'sorry, not sorry' — can describe Stanford University's about-face on their 'harmful language' list.

That is, if it's okay to use the phrase 'about-face.' Or have I unwittingly offended people with facial sensitivities?

Or those who reverse course under public scorn, as Stanford has, suddenly wiping their banned words from public view?

Oh, this list is a doozy, yet another example of so-called higher education at its worst. Stanford's list is the epitome of for-profit college as a con, more concerned with placating delicate sensibilities than challenging students with language and ideas that might feel radical, dangerous, counterintuitive, critical, and dare I say it, provocative.

The coddled American mind is now curdled and sour.

Take, for example, 'survivor' as a word and concept. I'm not sure when it replaced 'victim' in the lexicon — I'm guessing, in all seriousness, that 'Law & Order: SVU' had something to do with it — but that seemed a good step. Empowering. To be a survivor of war, rape, or domestic violence sounds both helpful and truthful.

But not to the anonymous brain trust at Stanford, which has decreed the term 'survivor' offensive. They suggest the far clunkier 'person who has been impacted by' or 'person who has experienced,' because 'using person-first language helps to not define people by just one of their experiences.'

Huh?

'Blind study,' Stanford says, 'unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative.'

'Dumb,' 'mentally ill, 'tone-deaf' and 'OCD' are off the list too. In Stanford's estimation, obsessive-compulsive disorder merely means one is 'detail-oriented.'

Anyone who has suffered with or who knows someone with OCD knows the deleterious effects of that disorder. Please. It's thoroughly unhelpful to insist life's difficulties are blessings.

Another Stanford perversion: To say something's going 'gangbusters' — slang for 'going great' — 'unnecessarily invokes the notion of police action against 'gangs' in a positive light.'

Right. Because any community plagued by gang violence, which usually suffers poverty and crime as co-morbidities, surely wouldn't want police action against violent gang activity.

I could go on and on, but that would be cruel. Instead, may I humbly suggest some actual language that does real harm to the public discourse, language I'd love to see not banned — banning is anathema to the American DNA, after all — but willingly abandoned. Top of my list:

'My truth,' 'your truth,' and any other phrasing that maintains truth is subjective, elastic, a bespoke notion that has no basis in fact. This is the opposite of truth. Know who has a truth? Harvey Weinstein. Election deniers. It's a slippery slope, and anyone who says this — morning show hosts are the worst offenders — sounds like a moron who can't argue facts.

This applies doubly to 'standing in your truth,' a logical and physical impossibility.

'Finding your voice.' Unless you have actually misplaced your voice in a different geographical location and spent time and money retrieving it, avoid.

'Taking up space.' 'Holding space.' The airy, meaningless language of ostensible female empowerment. You can neither take nor hold a non-object.

'Journaling.' Hard no. 'Keeping a journal,' remains sufficient. 'Journaling' tells the listener that you're among the saps spending $40 for an Oprah-style money grab.

'Journey.' Despoiled by countless 'Bachelor' contestants and self-help enthusiasts to describe anything other than the one thing it means: physically going on a voyage from Point A to Point B.

'This human.' A cloying phrase infecting unoriginal posters on social media. Could describe a housekeeper, a colleague, or one's own child. As such, denotes no significance, elevating a drinking buddy to the level of a spouse.

Also: What is another person if not human? Why the need for such a fatuous descriptor? An outgrowth, perhaps, of the infuriating one-word online endorsement 'this,' used to co-sign a post or tweet that one finds resonant.

English is one of the world's most versatile, imaginative, evocative languages. Do better.

Which brings us to 'some type of way,' used to describe feelings so overwhelming that no existing adjective could suffice. Makes the speaker sound lazy, stupid and lacking the baseline energy and cognitive function needed to conjure a word or two.

'All the things,' 'all the words,' 'all the feels': see above.

'Can't even': see above.

'Intentional.' Another filler word meant to lend heft to one's actions. If you did something — whether Venmo your sitter, file for divorce or flounce out of Buckingham Palace — you probably meant it.

'Additive.' Once used to describe chemicals and ingredients in foods, this word has been hijacked by those fluent in garbage language. Sounds important — intentional, even. Means nothing.

'Operationalize.' Corporate jingoism meant to inflect P&L sheets with wartime outcomes.

'Level up.' You can't be level and simultaneously rise above said level.

'Scale.' Has replaced 'growth' without any qualifier. Who's to say you won't scale down?

'Lived experience.' Is there any other kind?

'The fact that.' Clunky and redundant. Remove the first two words and you'll always get your point across seamlessly and elegantly.

'Effective altruism.' A fig leaf for billionaires and con artists (see Sam Bankman-Fried).

'You're fine.' Maddeningly used in place of 'that's okay,' or 'no offense taken.' I don't need a total stranger to tell me that I'm fine. Nor do you.

'Pregnant people.' 'People with breast cancer.' It is no longer deemed appropriate in many doctor's offices or medical literature or support groups to say 'pregnant woman' or 'woman with breast cancer,' even though women get pregnant and give birth. Even though breast affects less than one percent of men and is universally acknowledged to disproportionately affect and kill women.

When we begin to erase an entire population, be they cancer or rape survivors or women who suffer miscarriage or illness specific to their biology — and when that population feels pressure to submit — we are entering an Orwellian dystopia.

Language matters.